Hannah Haberkern

wow, das ist geschmacklos und kontraproduktiv 🤦

📢📢 Announcing this year's conference on the Mathematics of Neuroscience & AI (Rome, 9-12th June). We’ve got a stellar line-up and venue, and invite everyone to join:

www.neuromonster.org

Personally, I aim to review roughtly 2-3x as many papers per year as I assume I will submit (as corresponding author), which would be a good equilibrium if everyone did it. Certainly many more requests than this come in.

An interesting perspective on peer review. I personally think that peer review still more often strenghens a paper than not, so I would not be in favor of further devaluing it. Some form or compensation seems reasonable (be it in direct payment or reduced publishing cost).

After 5 years of developing, a new preprint from the lab - introducing our workflow for comparative insect connectomics, aimed at democratizing connectomics. @erc.europa.eu @lundvision.bsky.social @biologylu.bsky.social Read it here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

✨New Perspective out w/ Wenning Deng and @fearbrain.bsky.social in @cp-iscience.bsky.social ! We argue that social foraging gives us a unifying, and ecologically grounded way to study how decisions unfold across levels — from individuals and dyads to collectives.

www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

From our new paper out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social: www.cell.com/current-biol... w/ @neurofishh.bsky.social @gkafetzis.bsky.social @denilsson.bsky.social

Looking across animals, the vertebrate eye is an obvious outlier. Why is it so different that other highly visual animals?

Apply by May 7 for two early-career #neuro workshops at Janelia! Featuring joint sessions to foster collaboration between theory & experiment. 🧠 🤝

Theoretical Neuroscience→ janelia.news/THE26

Mechanistic Cognitive Neuroscience→ janelia.news/CNW26

@ratecoding.bsky.social @jvoigts.bsky.social

Fluorescent neurons on black background. We're hiring! PhD Student

🚨 We are #hiring a PhD Student to study cerebellum-like circuits in #Drosophila.

Please spread the word!

www.groschner-lab.org/join

#Neuroscience #PhD

Our new preprint is out!

A state-dependent neural circuit resolves approach–avoidance conflicts

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Fantastic work led by Devika Bodas, with key contributions from Marine Balcou, and a great collaboration with Lisa Scheunemann Lab, fearuting Şevval Demirci.

Academics vying for a spot in Epstein‘s world. There are so many. I feel the need to make a thread, so I don’t keep confusing them. 1/

How to collaborate with AI To make the best use of LLMs in research, turn your scientific question into a set of concrete, checkable proposals, wire up an automatic scoring loop, and let the AI iterate.

The creativity is still mostly human, writes @kenneth-harris.bsky.social. The AI’s strength is relentless, moderately clever trial-and-error in the space of technical solutions.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/artificial-i...

Epstein files reveal deeper ties to scientists than previously known Latest batch of documents show researchers consulting the financier and sex offender on publications, visas and more.

Newly released files from the investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein reveal that his ties to the scientific community were deeper than previously known.

go.nature.com/3Oq4Po2

There is still time to apply! See linked document for details.

Our new 2p microscope got freshly installed and tested this week and is now waiting for you :)

 Summary and implications for the evolution of metamorphosis. (A) Summary of results obtained from knockdown of chinmo in the first nymphal instar of O. fasciatus. chinmo knockdown results in a reduction in the number of nymphal instars, and enhanced rate of wing pad growth and morphogenesis. Gray lines highlight proposed equivalent instars based on the nymphal and adult patterns. (B) Antagonistic roles of Chinmo and Br in regulating the rate of nymphal wing pad growth. Br promotes allometric growth, while Chinmo expression in the absence of Br leads to isometric growth. (C) Model for the interactions between Chinmo, Br and E93 on nymphal maturation and adult development. (D) The separation of Chinmo and Broad function may have led to the separation of isometric growth during the larval stage and allometric growth and differentiation during metamorphosis in holometabolous insects.

chinmo provides insights into the evolution of insect metamorphosis

This Research Highlight showcases work by Hana Nagata and Yuichiro Suzuki from @wellesley.edu.

journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Thoughtful thread on using genAI in research 👇
In addition to the reasons mentioned here, I don't like to use AI generated images because it undermines the work of artists, who had already had their work being used without permission in the generation of the models.

I am very happy (and a bit scared) to present to you what we have been working on over the last 4 years. This manuscript is exactly what I dreamt of when I started the lab and I could not be happier and prouder of the outcome!

Satellite imagery of 6 large human-made square regions in the desert, each with a pastiche of different colors.

industrial-scale fine art in Turkmenistan:

www.google.com/maps/@38.552...

Beautiful to see yet another component of head direction circuit function being highly similar between flies and fish!

Population-level calcium bumps in the fly brain can be driven by structured inhibition, & T-type Ca channels play a key role in computation which, in this case, means combining heading and wind direction. It’s also a nice example of how physiology doesn’t always fall out cleanly from the connectome.

Neuronal calcium spikes enable vector inversion in the Drosophila brain In the fly central complex, PFNa neurons switch from firing classical sodium spikes when depolarized to firing non-canonical T-type calcium spikes when hyperpolarized. This bidirectional spiking allow...

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

We had a lot of fun working on this project (led by Itzel Ishida, not on bluesky). Some interesting highlights from the paper -

Looks like an interesting review!

Thrilled to start 2026 with our latest preprint, in which we dive into a dedicated forward-walking circuit in the fly brain: doi.org/10.64898/202.... This effort was spearheaded by the fantastic @chrisjdallmann.bsky.social with help from a bunch of talented people in the lab.

1/n: A new collaborative preprint from the lab to start the year: "A multi-ring shifter network computes head direction in zebrafish" together with Siyuan Mei, Martin Stemmler and Andreas Herz from the LMU, Munich.

Promotional graphic for the DisabledInSTEM 2026 Mentorship Program. The background is a dark blue gradient with flowing wave-like patterns in blue and gold. At the top, white text reads: “DisabledInSTEM 2026 Mentorship Applications Now Open.” Below, a yellow box with black text says: “Seeking Disabled Mentees and Dedicated Mentors to Champion Inclusion in STEM.” At the bottom, white text states: “Applications due December 5th.” In the lower right corner, there is the DisabledInSTEM logo.

It's that time of year again... time for #DisabledInSTEM 2026 Mentorship applications! I'm so excited to be running this program for the sixth year and seeing the growth over the years!

Mentee form: forms.gle/um5DvYnBi3tn...
Mentor form: forms.gle/BvaxnQm8uhUR...

Applications due December 5th!

Funding comes from the @dfg.de courtesy to the Emmy Noether programme.

To learn more about the lab, check out www.haberkernlab.de!

On the left, the image shows a schematic of a fly head, ring neurons and EPG neurons together with some calcium imaging frames. On the right is a photo of a fly on a ball in virtual reality and another schematic of a VR system.

📢 Join us, the Haberkern lab, @uni-wuerzburg.de for a postdoc studying neural circuit mechanisms of navigation. You’ll spearheading neurophysiology experiments on our brand new 2P!

⏳ Apply by 28th February 2026

Details: www.haberkernlab.de/docs/ENPostd...

#neuroscience #academicjobs #postdoc

Ever wanted to know how the visual system of a long distance migratory moth looks like? Then you'll find your answers in our new paper. Finally out, after about a decade of collecting data by a group af amazing co-authors. Find it here, open access: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Landing and takeoff sensorimotor pathways illustrated alongside fly drawings showing behavioral responses.

How do animals channel sensory information into motor pathways to generate flexible behavioral output? Excited to share a new preprint addressing this question by leveraging the new #maleCNS connectome, behavioral experiments, and in-vivo recordings: doi.org/10.64898/202.... A long🧵...

Exciting work on fast plasticity at an inhibitory connection. This helps to explain how insect can quickly orient themselves in novel environments.

It's so great to see this out – congratulations to everyone!